Bad Dog Facing Death Gets 'Life Sentence' at Prison

The judge originally ordered Chief, a British Columbia wolf and German shepherd mix, be put down after the dog kept escaping from its owners' property and allegedly "terrorized" neighbors, The Advocate reports.

A law in Pointe Coupee Parish, La., where Chief lived, requires dogs to be leashed or confined to an owner's property. Chief's case went to court, where neighbors unleashed their concerns about the canine.

Swayed by witness accounts of the alleged bad dog's behavior, Judge James Best ordered Chief be destroyed. But news reports about the dog's days being numbered spurred a prison warden to action.

The 18,000-acre maximum security prison could use a dog like Chief, the Angola prison's warden told Judge Best. The state prison has a program that deploys wolf hybrids at night to help patrol the prison's perimeter.

The prison program takes advantage of wolf hybrids' natural instincts, the warden told The Advocate. "We don't want them to be vicious killers, but to be aggressive. They become a security measure."

Chief's former owner was happy the dog wouldn't be put down, but still had concerns about how Chief would cope in prison.